Three Ancient Geographical Treatises in Translation

Hanno, the King Nikomedes Periodos, and Avienus

Duane W. Roller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367462543
• eBook ISBN: 9781000461664
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

This volume is a translation and commentary on the works of three geographers from Greco-Roman antiquity: Hanno of Carthage, from around 500 BC; the author of the Periodos Dedicated to King Nikomedes, from the last half of the second century BC; and Avienus, from the fourth century AD.

The modern translations of texts in this book represent 1, 000 years of Greco-Roman geographical scholarship, and thus provide an overview of the discipline from its beginnings to late antiquity. Readers will learn about the development of Greek geography, and the earliest adventures outside the Mediterranean into the Atlantic, as far south as the tropics and north toward the Arctic. These explorations make for fascinating stories about early human endeavors into an unknown world.

Three Ancient Geographical Treatises in Translation offers specialists new information about Greek exploration and a modern translation of significant ancient texts, while non-specialist scholars and undergraduate students with an interest in Greco-Roman literature and ancient geography will also find the volume useful and accessible.

1

Carthaginian expansion and exploration

DOI: 10.4324/9781003030379-2

The history of Carthaginian exploration—which mostly took place in the western Mediterranean and Atlantic regions—has been largely preserved through Greek and Latin sources, and thus in effect has become part of the Classical experience, in many ways inseparable from the accounts of Greek and Roman travellers to the same regions. In the last quarter of the ninth century BC (traditionally 814 BC), or somewhat earlier, Phoenician settlers, probably from Tyre, established a new outpost in North Africa at an easily defended site at the head of a deep bay about 60 km. southeast of the northernmost point of the continent.¹ Phoenicians had explored much of the Mediterranean, and were gaining a reputation as the primary seafarers of the region, “famous for their ships.”² Their settlement was called Qart-Hadasht (“New City”), which became Karchedon in Greek and Karthago in Latin. It became the most important Phoenician city in the western Mediterranean, and by the sixth century BC, as the Phoenician homeland faded due to Assyrian and Babylonian pressure, Carthage began to take on an independent identity.

Carthage continued the Phoenician tradition of expansionism, so much so that it became necessary to define the limits of spheres of influence between it and the Etruscans.³ Carthaginian settlements were established on the western Mediterranean islands and in the Iberian peninsula. But the great unknown was outside the Mediterranean, beyond the natural features that the Greeks called the Pillars of Herakles. There had been Phoenician probing into what lay beyond, into the great External Ocean, and it was said that they had established Gadir (Greek and Latin Gadeira or Gades, modern Cádiz), on the Iberian coast of the Atlantic, at about the time that Carthage was founded.⁴

Yet in Phoenician times there had been no systematic exploration of the Atlantic beyond its nearest portions. At first the Carthaginians did not venture into the outer ocean, concentrating their efforts in the western Mediterranean. They founded Panormos (modern Palermo) in Sicily, which had the finest harbor on the island, and other western Sicilian towns in the seventh century BC.⁵ There had been Carthaginian settlement on Sardinia even earlier,⁶ and the island came firmly under their control, as did Corsica and the Balearics. There was also a presence in southwestern Iberia by 700 BC, but only south of the Tader River (modern Segura, located between Cartagena and Alicante).⁷ With Carthaginian settlements in western Sicily and the other western Mediterranean islands by the late sixth century BC, as well as southwestern Iberia, Carthaginian expansionism in the Mediterranean seems to have come to an end. They considered the European mainland: from Iberia north of the Tader into the Keltic and Ligurian territory between the Pyrenees and Italy, and even Italy itself, but they did not move into these regions, in all likelihood because of the presence of two other major powers on the European coast: the Etruscans and various Greek states.

The Etruscans had expanded beyond their original homeland of Etruria (essentially modern Tuscany) as early as the beginning of the ninth century BC. They went south to the Tiber and north to the Padus (modern Po), and by the following century had established themselves around the Bay of Naples and had also made trading contacts throughout the western Mediterranean, gaining a foothold at least on Sardinia. They were a notable sea power and innovative in their shipbuilding.⁸ It is probable the Carthaginians believed that the Etruscans had made it impossible for any settlement on the Italian peninsula.

There was also another presence in the western Mediterranean from at least the eighth century BC. Various Greek populations, beginning with those from the Central Greek island of Euboia, established settlements in southern Italy and Sicily. On the mainland these extended from Brentesion (modern Brindisi) and Taras (modern Taranto) in the east around to Kyme (modern Cuma) at the north end of the Bay of Naples. On Sicily, Greek towns were all along the east coast of the island, and west to the edge of the Carthaginian region. Selinous, at the southwest, was the westernmost Greek outpost, not far from the Carthaginian cities on the west coast. It was founded in the second half of the sixth century BC.⁹ Moreover, it was only a short distance across the Sicilian Strait—the narrowest part of the Mediterranean—from Carthage itself. With this Greek presence in Sicily firmly established by 600 BC, there was nowhere on the island for the Carthaginians other than the narrow strip on the west that they already possessed.

There remained the Keltic-Ligurian coast and northern Iberia, between the Etruscans in northern Italy and the Tader River. But this too became closed to Carthaginian interests. Around 600 BC, emigrants from the Ionian city of Phokaia established Massalia (modern Marseille). They made a reconnaissance of much of the western Mediterranean, but Massalia was the center of their interests and soon became the most important Greek city west of Italy.¹⁰ Other settlements by the Phokaians and Massalians soon populated much of the northwestern Mediterranean coast between the Etruscans and the Carthaginians.

Thus by the end of the sixth century BC, the Carthaginians found the western Mediterranean closed to new endeavors. Even their existing cities were threatened, by the Greeks in Sicily and the Etruscans in Sardinia. The only direction that remained available for trade opportunities and new settlement was to the west, through the Pillars of Herakles and outside the Mediterranean. Therefore plans were laid to send at least two major expeditions beyond the Pillars.

There had been some knowledge of what lay outside the Pillars for about a century before the Carthaginian expeditions. Gadir (modern Cádiz), lying just a few kilometers from the western outlet of the Mediterranean, had been founded by 800 BC, and there is evidence that the Phoenicians went farther along the western Iberian coast.¹¹ The Phoenicians may also have probed south of the Pillars.¹² But with the exception of Gadir these were merely reconnaissances, not the establishment of permanent settlements. A Greek expedition under the command of Kolaios, from Samos, had gone as far as the rich district of Tartessos in southwest Iberia about 630 BC, claiming to be off course but more probably using this as an excuse to investigate Phoenician or Carthaginian interests in the region.¹³ This led to trade connections between the eastern Greeks and Tartessos, but Greeks seem to have had no further concern about what lay beyond the Pillars.

There was also the Phoenician circumnavigation of Africa during the reign of the Egyptian king Necho (610–595 BC). He sent an expedition around the continent in a clockwise direction, from the Red Sea to the Pillars of Herakles.¹⁴ Opinion is still divided, and has been since antiquity, as to whether this journey actually took place, or was even completed. Herodotus’ account provides details that support its existence—such as stopping to plant and harvest crops or changes in the celestial phenomena in the far south—but the journey, organized in Egypt, may have had little effect on Carthaginian aspirations a century later. Thus before around 500 BC there had been no extensive exploration of what lay beyond the Pillars or any broad conception of the western coasts of the African or European continents.

How much the Carthaginians knew about these early efforts is not certain. Nevertheless, around 500 BC the decision was made at the highest levels of the Carthaginian government to mount at least two major expeditions, one to the north of the Pillars and the other to the south. They would be led by two important members of the Carthaginian aristocracy: Hanno (Hannon) to the south and Himilco (Himilkon) to the north. Who these personalities were is not certain, since both names are among the most common known at Carthage.

The contemporary voyages may be seen as parallel events, since they served similar needs within Carthaginian policy. But the evidence for them is quite different. There is the extant summary of Hanno’s cruise, derived from his own writings; the journey is also mentioned in a number of ancient sources, including the major ones on the topic of geography. On the other hand, Himilco is not mentioned in extant literature before the first century AD. A published report, now lost, still existed, which Pliny the Elder saw.¹⁵ The major source for the expedition is material buried in the Ora Maritima of Avienus, to be discussed later in this volume, and thus details of Himilco’s expedition must be reconstructed from these sparse accounts and other equally elusive ones. He seems to have gone as far as Brittany, perhaps even to Ireland and the Azores. By contrast Hanno, as the extant text shows, went south into the West African tropics. These voyages, especially that of Hanno, were not without competition: at about the same time, the Massalians sent out their own Atlantic explorer, Euthymenes, who is also only documented in fragmentary and late sources, and like Himilco is not cited before the first century AD.¹⁶ The use of the first person (navigavi) to describe Euthymenes’ voyage demonstrates that, as in the case of Himilco, an actual report still existed which is now lost. Nevertheless it can be determined that Euthymenes went far south along the Atlantic coast of Africa and was probably the first Greek to report on crocodiles and hippopotami, thus reaching one of the major rivers of the tropics. But details of chronology are obscure enough that it cannot be determined whether Euthymenes precipitated Hanno’s expedition or was in reaction to it.

Notes

1 Hédi Dridi, “Early Carthage: From its Foundation to the Battle of Himera (ca. 814–480 BCE),” in The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean (ed. Carolina López-Ruiz and Brian R. Doak, Oxford 2019) 141–6.

2 Homer, Odyssey 15.415.

3 Aristotle, Politics 3.5.10.

4 Velleius Paterculus 1.2.3; Michael Dietler, “Colonial Encounters in Iberia and the Western Mediterranean: An Exploratory Framework,” in Colonial Encounters in Ancient Iberia (ed. Michael Dietler and Carolina López-Ruiz, Chicago 2009) 7.

5 Thucydides 6.2.3; Diodoros 22.10.4; V. Tusa, “Panormos,” PECS 671.

6 D. Manconi, “Sulcis,” PECS 866–7.

7 Maria Carme Belarte, “Colonial Contacts and Protohistoric Indigenous Urbanism on the Mediterranean Coast of the Iberian Peninsula,” in Colonial Encounters in Ancient Iberia (ed. Michael Dietler and Carolina López-Ruiz, Chicago 2009) 91–2.

8 Giovannangelo Camporeale, “The Etruscans and the Mediterranean,” in A Companion to the Etruscans (ed...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of maps
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Carthaginian expansion and exploration
• 2. The Periplous of Hanno
• 3. The Periodos Dedicated to King Nikomedes
• 4. The Ora Maritima of Avienus
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Passages cited
• Index